Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of initial trust on mobile banking user adoption.

Design/methodology/approach
– Based on the valid responses collected from a survey questionnaire, structural equation modeling (SEM) technology was employed to examine the research model.

Findings
– The results indicate that structural assurance and information quality are the main factors affecting initial trust, whereas information quality and system quality significantly affect perceived usefulness. Initial trust affects perceived usefulness, and both factors predict the usage intention of mobile banking.

Research limitations/implications
– The sample was mainly composed of users having rich mobile Internet experience, which may affect their trust in mobile banking. Future research needs to generalize these results to other samples, such as those users without much mobile Internet experience.

Originality/value
– Extant research has mainly adopted information technology adoption theories such as TAM to explain mobile user behavior, and has seldom examined the effect of initial trust on mobile banking user adoption. However, the high perceived risk and low switching cost highlight the necessity to build initial trust to facilitate user behavior. This research fills the gap.